


Doom: Eternal War

by Master_of_the_Boot1



Category: Doom (Video Games), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: AU, Crossover, Doom Eternal, Other, Primaris - Freeform, The Lost Primarchs (Warhammer 40.000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29114529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Master_of_the_Boot1/pseuds/Master_of_the_Boot1
Summary: Chaos closes in on the Imperium.But it is not the Emperor or his armies that they fear.One man shadowed the Emperor as the Greatest threat to the Ruinous Powers.They called the Emperor a god.They called him . . .Doom.
Comments: 80
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is me making the Doom guy/Doom slayer one of the lost primarchs. 
> 
> Please enjoy this.

Doom: Eternal War

_In the Grim Dark of the Far Future there is only war,_

_The Forces of Chaos advance on all fronts, with resistance collapsing before them._

_They do not fear the Armies of the Imperium, the Inquisition or even the Adeptus Astartes_

_They do not fear Man or his machines and crafts of War._

_They fear the Mark of the Beast_

_They fear him._

_In dark ages past, only one man could stand against them._

_They called him Emperor and then God,_

_The Forces of Chaos fear . . ._

_Doom._

**Holy Terra, the Dawn of the Forty First Millennium**

The Empire was dead and Guilliman knew it. The Lord of Ultramar screamed and stabbed a ceramite blade through the rubber representation of a Terran bird that had gone extinct long ago. Some kind of water fowl. The creature looked balefully up at Guilliman with its beady dot eyes. Its red beak clashing garishly with its yellow body.

“Shut up!” Guilliman shouted and crushed the rubber bath toy in his mighty palm. The presence of the thing did not distract him as he hoped it would. The rubber body of the bath toy resisted the blood in the water. No amount of perfume or soap was getting it off of him.

The blood on his hands wasn’t coming off and none of the sponges or scrubbing implements of the Imperial bath could get it off.

Furtively, anxiously, Guilliman scrubbed his red hands. Some distance away from the golden tub, lay the corpse of Leman Russ. Fully consumed by the Wulver curse and dead by his brother’s hand.

Maybe the physical blood on his hands was gone, but Guilliman saw it differently. The mighty warrior King, Leman Russ was dead like a rabid animal.

This wasn’t what Guilliman wanted. When he’d been brought out of stasis he was so full of hope. Hope was his first mistake.

As much as he was able to steer the rotting, shambling corpse of an empire it was still decaying. There was nothing that even a Primarch could do to save it.

And was it even worth saving? Guilliman inherited the most ghastly, unjust, backwards, primitive, superstitious state that had ever existed in human history. There was nothing in history that could even compare to this.

In his hope, Guilliman had tried to hold it together.

“shut up!” Guilliman turned and screamed at the corpse of Leman russ. Hope. He was so hopeful when Russ came to him. He was so glad that he wasn’t the only one

Hope was his first and greatest mistake.

He had gained many military victories and the boot licking sycophants leading the Imperium kissed his ass and told him it tasted like sugar. He had many military victories. He’d killed so many of the Imperium’s enemies. People praised him like a saint, like a god almost. Or maybe an Angel.

It dawned on him not long ago that this Imperium of Man was terminally sick and should be destroyed.

The only problem was the destruction of the Imperium would mean the final victory of chaos.

And there was nothing he could do about that.

So he had the servitors draw him a bath and he tried to scrub the blood off of his hands.

“ _Alert, Breach in Holy Terra Defence Grid.”_

The automated warnings blared in his ears like the audio version of broken glass.

“So destroy it!” Guilliman snapped.

“ _Alert, Primarch signature detected.”_

“Who is it?” Guilliman looked back at the ceramite knife in his hands. Then looked over at the adamantium sword lying next to the bath tub that he’d used to behead Russ.

“ _We are detecting the biometric signature of Primarch XI.”_

Guilliman's eyes had widened. Surprise was writ across his face in a fashion that pushed back his fratricide induced madness. “Then let us greet him. Contact him. Tell him to meet me in the throne room.”

The Lord of Ultramar stood up from the bath rub and dropped the knife into the bloody waters.

Leman Russ loved baths. He loved them as much as he loved fighting, eating and fucking. When it came down to it, the Wolf King loved bathing more than any of them. In baths more fancy and luxurious than anything Guilliman had ever attempted on his home world.

Russ would be missed. He was gone for all the wrong reasons.

But Guilliman had a guest to entertain and he needed to be presentable.

Guilliman stood upon a golden throne. Not The Golden Throne. But a throne just the same. This was a rotten, primitive empire. They creamed their panties over being ruled by a superior being.

That was one thing that this rotten, corrupt Imperium had in common with the Golden age of the Emperor. They all worshipped a genetically superior specimen and treated him like a god. That hadn’t changed.

Guilliman thought on how the idea of an Emperor was a primitive, crude idea that should have been left in the dust. The fact that the Golden Age of Humanity revolved around an absolute dictator operating without any oversight or accountability was grotesque and monstrous to him.

His existence was monstrous, Guilliman pondered. His existence and that of his brothers was some kind of fascist fever dream.

He wanted to die, but he was too married to duty to end it. His father had built all the Primarchs with safeguards against suicide.

The sound of footfalls stopped his brooding.

The Lord of Ultramar stood up in his throne, resplendent in his gold and blue armour. He very much looked the part of a wise king; gravely assessing the devastation and making hard choices with the word choices in quotations.

He hated this. He hated that pageantry was built into the very fibre of his being. He couldn’t stop being dramatic even if he wanted to. He had no choice.

So it was very much to his surprise that he saw one of the two lost Primarchs walk into the throne room dressed like a unicorn.

“What the fuck?” Roboute couldn’t help but let profanity slip.

There was something to be said about Primarch number 11. He absolutely gave no fucks about pomp or ceremony. He also wasn’t afraid to look utterly silly.

And the pink horse tail coming from the seat of his pants, or the goofy unicorn decorating his helmet was about as silly as it came. From behind his back, two cheap, fluffy pink wings stuck out.

Far from looking like a genetically superior ruler of mankind, Primarch 11 looked like a weirdo who did entertainment at children’s birthday parties in an age long past.

“Is that you?” He asked the brother who’s name and legion had been erased utterly from history. Well that wasn’t totally true. Roboute didn’t know his name. None of them did. “Is that really you?”

The Towering figure dressed in gay unicorn armour nodded his head. Underneath his clear face plate, his thick eyebrows ffurrowed and his eyes cartoonishly looked one way or another. Most mortals who saw him in his state would me more likely to piss themselves laughing than salute or bow to him.

“I recognize your face,” said Roboute. “It’s been so long. I know you hated our father, you hated him so much but I still think of you as family.”

Primarch 11 said nothing. He didn’t even nod. His shifty eyes focused completely on Guilliman. The massive, steel shotgun in his hands held ready.

“So why are you here, why now?” Guilliman asked. “Do you want money?” he laughed at his own joke. The cracks in his facade showing.

Number 11 said nothing.

“How do I know it’s you?” the Lord of Ultramar asked. “How do I know this isn’t some trick of the ruinous powers?”

Number 11 paused.

Guilliman was honestly surprised when the lost Primarch put away his shotgun. He removed his helmet.

In his hand he held a shining, golden trumpet.

There was confusion once more across Roboute's face.

Then the Primarch 11 started playing a song on the trumpet.

The familiar _doot_ him like a ton of bricks.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsjHbxVI3EI>

Number eleven started playing the song _Knee Deep in the Dead_ , by the fabled Remembrancer Robert Prince.

“So it is you,” said Guilliman, his face pale. “Welcome home, Doom Guy. We have much to talk about.”


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Slayer returns to the Imperial Palace of Terra. 
> 
> His mission is not a holy one. 
> 
> In his insane crusade, he seeks to commit the ultimate crime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this so much. 
> 
> Read and review. Let me know what you think .
> 
> If you hate me. Tell me. 
> 
> If you love it. Let me know.

Doom: Eternal War

Chapter 2

_Holy Terra, The Forty First Millennium_

The Doom slayer walked down the halls of the Emperor’s palace dressed in his unicorn fursona armour. Or the Doom Guy. It didn’t really matter what people called him. Neither of those names were ones he had picked out for himself. Even the role of an Emperor’s Primarch was not something that he chose for himself.

In his silent focus, the Doom Slayer marched towards a hall of statues and plinths. One among many of the hideously garish and ornate palace. The Doom Slayer resolutely approached the the room full of statues of the Primarchs.

Statues as they had been before the Horus Heresy. Doom Slayer kept walking past the marble likeness of the Emperor’s tools.

Very briefly, the Doom Slayer glanced over at empty plinth with the symbol II on it.

Just as quickly as he’d looked away, he turned back to his purpose.

There, amidst the Halls remembering the Emperor’s pets, was an empty dais with the numerals XL on it.

His dais.

In a way, his erasure from the Imperium’s records had been perfect. Even better and more thorough than the other lost Primarch.

The Doom Slayer welcomed it.

Clicking the safety on his shotgun, he strapped the weapon onto his back between his fluffy pink wings.

More clicking followed as the Doom Slayer detached the heavy gauntlet on his left hand. For the sake of preparedness, he left on the magical retractable star wand that he used to brutally murder his foes.

The Doom Slayer held his hand over the empty pillar with his number on it. The stonework glowed with arcane tech and dark sorcery from days long before the Dark Age of Technology.

He had much work to do and there were tools here he needed. The pillar opened and from within. Peering inside, the Doom Slayer found his suspicions confirmed.

The old man had kept his promise.

Reattaching his gauntlet, he reached within. The Celestial locator was a very, very old piece of technology; crafted by the same people as the Golden Throne. The massive golden sphere within its crude cage glowed with unearthly light.

Men and women would go mad looking inside its bright surface. It was a technology so alien and insane as to be deeper than magic. Even the eerie xenos technology could not bring such horror to the hearts of men.

Horror which the Doom Slayer easily ignored. He had a mission. He would not be swayed from it.

_Why are you here?_

The Doom Slayer snarled under his helmet.

_Why are you here?_

The voice repeated itself. There was no anger in that voice. There was no rancour or threats. Even if there had been, the Doom Slayer (for once) would not have reached for his gun.

The second of the Lost Primarchs signed and clenched his hands. Putting down the Celestial Locator, he took off the truly ridiculous helmet that he deigned to wear.

He wanted to look Malcador the Sigilite in the eyes.

_Why are you here, my boy?_

The ghostly visage of Malcador the Sigilite looked with baleful sadness upon the Doom Slayer. His spectral eyes looked upon the lost Primarch with only pity.

Anger burned in the Doom Slayer’s eyes. For once in many thousands of years he wanted to say something.

He couldn’t.

He could only stare back at the ghost of the most powerful psyker who had ever lived. The Ghost of the Emperor’s only true friend (probably.)

_That is not yours to take_.

Doom Slayer ignored the warp ghost, the bony old man who’d once been the second most powerful human in the universe.

_I offered to give you a means to find the champions of Chaos. I promised you power. But you cannot kill the Emperor._

The Doom Slayer paused. If he had the power of speech, he would have said nothing. Moments passed. A Primarch and a ghost. A powerful, unstoppable force of nature and the shadow of an old man who had once been the King maker and eventually the King of the Imperium of Man.

It happened slowly. His chest shook and his snarl curled upwards into a ghastly, malicious smile. Sadistic glee writ large across his face.

Equally sincere, sadness took over the stately aquiline features of the once Sigilite.

_You don’t know what you are doing, boy. I know you never cared for fame, riches or titles but what you are doing is wrong. It is evil. Mankind must be ruled._

The last one. The last one.

Mankind must be ruled.

The Doom Slayer shook with silent laughter. Air forced itself past his vocal cords. A high, squeaky parody of laughter came out his throat; loud as a whisper and horrible as the hissing of a snake.

Malcador held out his ghostly hands.

_You loved me once. My boy. Please, please. When I still breathed, I know you hated Chaos as much as anyone and you were my greatest weapon against them. But you were always more than a weapon. You are a person._

The ancient warp ghost paused as celestial tears ran down his face.

_As fucked up as this is, you were the closest I ever had to a son. Blazchowitz, I am begging you. Do not kill the Emperor._

The Doom Slayer stopped laughing.

The Joke wasn’t funny anymore.

Clad in his ludicrous unicorn armour., he felt like a clown. The Doom Slayer looked at the ghost of the old man. There was for a moment, sadness in his eyes.

Then just as quickly, it was gone.

The Doom Slayer formed his thumb and finger into the shape of a gun.

Pressing the finger gun to the side of his head, the Doom Slayer let the thumb hammer fall.

**Boom.**

His own psychic voice spoke to the ghost. Doing what vocal cords could not.

**Boom.**

The Doom Slayer fired his finger gun into his head.

**Boom.**

Malcador was speechless.

_Son,_

His last pleading word fell on deaf ears as the Doom Slayer joyfully put the helmet back on his head. From inside the helmet he let out a shrill, squeakily not-laugh.

Yes, he had loved the old man.

He had loved Malcador.

And that wasn’t going to stop him.

Taking the Celestial Locator, he left the pump action shotgun where it was. Instead, the Doom Slayer grabbed the Super shotgun with meat hook that was attached to his hip. The time for talking was over. The time for games, for subterfuge and bullshit was long past due.

Truth be told, Doom Slayer has already burned evil single bridge behind him. He had turned his back on the Imperium long before it had decided to erase his name and legion from all records. They could not hurt him. They could not promise him anything that he wanted.

Doom Slayer grinned under his visor. His eyes full of evil violence and unholy hatred.

He was going to rip out the beating heart of Chaos and show it to them.

And then he would show the Galaxy that a God Emperor could be killed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Slayer hunts down Abbadon the Despoiler. 
> 
> But his quest revenge will go much, much farther than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read and review. 
> 
> Always review. 
> 
> even if you hate it. Review.

Doom: Eternal War

Chapter 3

_The Forty First Millennium, Cadia,_

It wasn’t the Cadian Guard who stopped Abaddon the Despoiler. It wasn’t Battlefleet Cadia of the Segmentum Obscurus. It wasn’t the Inquisition or the Space Marines or any other of the pathetic servants of the corpse god.

The Arch Fiend, the boogeyman of a million worlds went flying through the walls of the Blackstone fortress. Momentum took the hulking, armoured figure through many, many walls. The blood of his slaves slicked the ground and let him slide along the floor like a piece of refuse.

Abandon looked up with hatred at the towering figure in Green armour. He was the size of a demigod, but he wore an outfit that was a modification of an Imperial guardsman.

Snarling with rage, the Despoiler pounced upon the Doom Slayer. In his hand was the dreaded sword, _Drach’nyen._ A weapon of unholy power, it was more a plague on reality in the shape of a blade.

Few enemies could stand with a weapon, it carved through Space Marines like wet paper and feasted upon souls.

Abaddon stopped, kinetic energy running up his arm as his massive devil sword was blocked by something just as ravenous and savage.

Sparks flew where the Doom Slayer blocked Darch’nyen with an almighty chainsaw. An arcane, evil engine of ancient design; crafted by a one handed madman who spent his days hunting and killing demons, the Dopefish chainsaw was a thing of madness. The true equal of the evil sword; born from the first act of murder ever committed by a human being.

Abaddon glared at the Doom Slayer with a rage that could melt adamantium. Grabbing the hilt with both hands, he pushed against the lost Primarch. Try as he might, the Doom Slayer would not budge and his chainsaw was unyielding; screaming like a ravenous beast who hungered for blood.

In the Chainsaw, _Drach’nyen_ had found an equal. Abaddon however was no equal to the Doom Slayer. He could feel his boots digging into the shattered floor of the Black Stone fortress.

All of his slaves had turned and run. The oxygen in the room explosively decompressed as the fortress broke in half. Destroyed like so much pointless trash by the barbarous hatred and reckless madness of the Doom Slayer.

Few beings in the universe would be crazy enough to destroy a Black Stone Fortress; fewer still had the ability to make it happen.

In the vacuum of space, the pair of them remained rooted to the spot as one half of the fortress fell into a decaying orbit around Cadian Space and started to burn up. Outside the other half of the Black Stone Fortress, the scattered remnants of the Imperium’s space forces were mopping up the routing Chaos fleet.

Seeing their Leader’s Command ship go down in flames and hear vox transmissions about a chainsaw and shotgun wielding lunatic slaughter Khornate Berserkers like they were newborn kittens took the pep and gusto out of their steps.

Abaddon saw all of this. Saw his armies abandon him, saw his plans of Galactic Domination going down the fresher.

Through the fire and smoke and chaos, he could see the eyes of the Doom Slayer meet his rage with one that was greater.

Truth be told, Abaddon was jealous. He was fundamentally a man without fear. He had one goal to increase his personal power at any cost.

The Doom Slayer wasn’t after personal power and he had no love for the Imperium. It was why Abaddon could never understand him. He never understood why a man so filled with rage was so impossible to define, to pin down and understand.

From behind them, a floating relic of the Dark Age of Technology hovered in space; untouched by the largest Battle that had ever occurred over the skies of Cadia.

Down below, the Planet was a burning wreck. Continent spanning eight pointed stars burned bright from the surface. Nearly two thirds of the human population had been consumed.

Cadia would recover in time. Doom Slayer would see to it.

Abaddon was thrown off balance, the breast plate of his armour blown wide open like a tin can.

Two gigantic spent shells dropped into space and flew into the void. The Doom Slayer kicked Abaddon in the chest, caving in his ribs.

Still, the Despoiler refused to yield to one of the bastard pups of the Corpse Emperor. He struck with the claw of Horus, aiming to disembowel the Doom Slayer.

Yet the mighty weapon which had mortally wounded the God Emperor of Mankind failed to penetrate the cheap flack jacket that the Doom Slayer wore. Insultingly, it tore open his abdominal armour and stylishly revealed his sculpted abdominal muscles.

Horus was shocked for less than on one thousandth of a milisecond. It was enough for the Doom Slayer.

The Doom Slayer has swapped out his super shotgun for another weapon that while not so storied was just as old and faithful.

The plasma rifle opened fire at Abaddon’s face at point blank range.

There was no way for Abaddon to scream as his face was melted off by the super heated plasma streams. Any other being would have been vaporized by the firepower inherent to a Barrage Class Plasma Gun. But Abaddon was no ordinary foe.

The combination of kinetic energy and thermal power sent him flying into space, the meat cooked off his skull and his iconic top knot burnt to ashes. Yet he was still very much alive and kicking despite his caved in chest cavity and horrifying head trauma.

The Doom Slayer eyed his target and bent his knees, thrusting into the maelstrom of the space battle. Ahead of him, the Despoiler tumbled through a minefield of debris, dead bodies, lethal radiation and searing plasma.

Abaddon clashed into the exposed hull of a Apocalypse Class Battleship. Through some accident of combat, the whole conning tower of the vessel had been blown clean off; the result of which created a giant amphitheatre like area for him and the Doom Slayer to do battle.

As an added accident of battle, the ship’s artificial gravity was still on. So Abaddon would have the pleasure of killing the Slayer in decent, delicious gravity. Zero G combat was never much fun anyway.

The Doom Slayer came crashing down amidst the technological ruins of a dead battleship, no more than a dozen paces from Abaddon.

The Lost Primarch did not wait, opening fire with his Plasma Gun. Only for it to be blocked by a massive red energy shield that Abaddon projected from his wrist gauntlet.

In a surprise twist, a super shotgun ejected from a hidden compartment int he Despoiler’s armour; written with arcane runes along its barrel. It was a perfect dark replica of the Doom Slayer’s own trusty weapon.

The spread of shotgun pellets would have been able to kill whole armies, but the superhuman agility of the Doom Slayer allowed him to evade the shot.

No rest for the wicked as Abaddon attacked with his lethal sword _Drach’nyen._ The dark super shotgun clenched in his power claw.

His strike went for the Doom Slayer’s head. The evil demon sword sliced the Doom Slayer’s plasma gun in half; causing it to explode.

The detonation would have been able to melt a Baneblade Tank like it was tin foil. Abaddon shielded himself from the explosion with his red energy shield.

The Despoiler cried out as he felt a boot strike him in the small of the back. In his terrible speed and power, the Doom Slayer had used the cover of exploding plasma to get behind Abaddon.

So powerful was the force of his strike it shattered the Despoiler’s back plate.

He wasted no time as he opened fire on the prone Abaddon with a Minigun Class seven barrel Bolter Gun.

Even in the vacuum of space, Abaddon's screams could be heard as the flesh was blown off his body.

Pitiless, without mercy, the Doom slayer emptied his minigun into Abaddon.

It was something from nightmare which emerged as the Doom Slayer’s weapon overheated.

Abaddon charged through the smoke and debris, his armour completely destroyed. He looked like nothing but a bloody skeleton with a few scraps of meat hanging off of it. Only his sword and his Power claw remained intact.

Very likely, the cursed power claw fed on the blood of humanity was the only thing keeping him alive.

Abaddon hoped for the lightning charged power claw to kill the Doom Slayer, but the Lost Primarch only caught it.

Electricity ran up his body and Abaddon could see the Doom Slayer’s skeleton beneath his meat. It would have been enough to kill Guilliman, Horus or Sanguinus seven times over.

It was not enough to kill the Doom Slayer by Far.

The rage within him boiled over as Abaddon channelled all his hate into the power fist. Yet even as his body smoked and smouldered, the Doom Slayer did not flinch and did not die.

_Why do you not join me!_

Abaddon raged in psychic might, as his tongue and mandible blown were completely blasted away.

_What makes you better than me?_

In that moment, the Doom Slayer spoke for the first time in over ten thousand years.

“Daisy,” was all he said.

Abaddon thought it was a joke. He was confused. Then the extendable blade strapped to the Slayer’s arm ejected and pierced him through the eye.

The heavy steel Doom blade punched deep into Abaddon's brain but that was not what killed him. The overpowering, unstoppable, elemental lightning that he was pumping into the Doom Slayer was now directly being pumped into his body; his own power turned against him.

There wasn’t even time for a scream as Abaddon exploded like a bug caught in a void shield. In one second he was in the next he wasn’t.

The Claw of Horus and _Drach’nyen_ hit the deck plating of the ruined battleship. Doom Slayer stomped on the claw like a piece of trash and broke it apart. It was the sword he was after. It was always what he was after. Killing Abaddon was a nice bonus and it bought him time.

He looked down at Cadia below, the burning Chaos Stars had now cooled to nothing. In a decade or tow they would be gone entirely from the planet’s surface.

Killing Abaddon was a nice bonus but it was not his end goal.

A long time ago, the Doom Slayer was betrayed. He aimed to repay that betrayal.

Inside of his helmet, he spoke again, rough guttural words. After ten thousand years his voice was returning to him. Yet there was nobody he wanted to talk to.

He spoke only to himself.

“ _Rip . . . and . . . tear_.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Slayer returns to Mars as he is branded a traitor to the Imperium and declared a heretic. 
> 
> None of that will stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big shout out to anyone who reads and reviews. 
> 
> Each review I get on this story fills me with joy. So my eternal thanks to the people who stop to read and review my work.

Doom: Eternal Warfare

Chapter 4

_Mars City, The Forty First Millennium_

Mars City was the Unofficial name of the port of entry to the Red Planet. It was the gateway to Mars, the front door of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This was where the Tek Priests of the Red Planet sorted out who was and wasn’t worthy to set foot on their world.

The port was gigantic, billions of souls passing through every single day. Everything from agents of the various Adeptus Orders of the Imperium to hordes of indentured servants and pilgrims on their way to Holy Terra.

The command economy of the Adeptus Mechanicus saw little demand for luxuries, drugs and other goods. However the forges and the Shipyards of the ring of Iron demanded much in the way of raw materials. As such the leadership of the Mechanicus would cut deals with the various free traders in order to keep their vast industrial complex up and running at full capacity.

Among the teeming billions visiting Mars City, crews of mercenaries were arriving to find work. For the most part they were used as disposable security forces; either to explore the forbidden depths of the Libraris Omnis or to oversee the hordes of disposable slaves used for one dirty purpose or another.

As grand as Mars City was, it was more or less a mundane place; a hub of transit much like any other. Greeting visitors to the city were armed guards, weapons, vehicles and killing tools. But there was equally large an army of lawyers, Servitors, case workers, record keepers, clerks and more. It was a customs office after all and records were meticulous. The Mechanicus were nothing if not obsessed with knowledge. Not even the slightest scrap of inane information about disposable mercenaries would be discarded.

At one such desk at the Maw of Mars City, a Tek Priest scanned a mercenary’s passport. Moving around the state sanctioned piece of plaz in its many manipulator arms; the junior Tek priest scanned through the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum. Before long, the mercenary was cleared through.

“ _Proceed,”_ buzzed the Tek priest through a cheap vocalizer. Inputting the data into a nearby servitor skull, the Tek Priest raised its right arm. “ _Next.”_

Thudding footballs rattled the Durasteel floor. After the Catachan Jungle Fighter, the gigantic female Ogryn was a sight to behold. With each thundering step, their shaggy mane of ginger hair shook. Two blue eyes bulged hideously out of her flabby, pasty face.

Worse still were the unnerving grins that the Ogryn woman would give every single person who walked across her field of view. Snarls or threats would have been preferable to the flashing of yellowed horse-teeth displayed very firmly from the middle of the uncanny valley.

“ _Begin,”_ buzzed the Tek Priest once more. “ _Incorrect information, deliberate or accidental obfuscation of facts will result in summary execution.”_

The Ogryn woman said nothing, her bright yellow trench coat searing the eyes of any who didn’t have mechanical eyes. Her bugged out eyes and equine teeth remained on display for the junior Tek Priest, who showed no reaction to her continual unnerving smiles or the strange shifts in her posture.

“Make way!” shouted a voice that was all too human.

The figure dressed in the battle armour of an Adeptus Arbites was bad news enough. However he paled into comparison to the sight of the battle scarred old man wearing the Rosary of an imperial inquisitor.

The sight of such a feared figure; a witch hunter, heretic killer, chaos destroyer was enough to make even the most hardened mercenaries shake in their boots and say prayers to the Good Emperor himself.

Gregor Eisenhorn moved past the inhabitants of Mars City as a very ancient religious figure had once parted the red sea. Moving forward with his sword cane for balance, the Inquisitor was a pillar of faith and power.

Everyone looked away from the Inquisitor, save for the various Tek Priests doing their duties, the mindless servitor skulls and the one Ogryn woman.

The ginger Ogryn in her floor length yellow trench coat looked at the Inquisitor with exaggerated, cartoon fear.

Eisenhorn approached the man he’d been waiting for. “Why are you distracting me, Commissar Cain?”

Tall handsome, rakish despite his age, Caiaphas Cain was more or less the polar opposite of Gregor Eisenhorn. Roughly the same age as the Inquisitor, he’d pulled strings in order to have Magos Biologis do plastic surgery on him; with the intent of looking as beautiful as possible in his advanced years.

“Inquisitor Amberly Vale wants to see you right away,” said Cain, giving Eisenhorn his most charming smile. “Turns out the Inquisition wasn’t happy with you taking a whole platoon of Grey Knights and going on a wild Gr ox chase across the eye of terror. I promise Inquisitor Vale just wants to talk and isn’t planning to assassinate you or anything.”

“Have you seen the Doom Slayer,” Eisenhorn demanded. His white knuckle grip around his sword cane was the only sign of his agitation.

“Not since you lost him,” Cain raised his arm politely, indicating that Eisenhorn had the chance to leave.

“Watch your mouth!” Snarled the Arbites in Eisenhorn’s retinue.

“What’s that?” Eisenhorn pointed to a wall by the public bathroom.

_Doom Slayer lives_

That’s what the laser carved letters on the stone wall read.

“It’s graffiti,” remarked Cain, “The Mechanicus are pretty brutal when it comes to petty crimes and traffic violations. They’ve probably turned the artist into nutrient slurry by now. Though I’m shocked nobody’s cleaned up that filth by now.”

“Do you think this is funny?” Eisenhorn’s voice was colder than the Valhallan tundra. “Do I make you laugh, Commissar Cain?”

“Never,” said Caiaphas as the group began to walk. “But we shouldn’t keep the Inquisitor waiting. Neither of us like paperwork or politics, so let’s try to be friendly even if we’re not friends. This doesn’t have to be hard.”

Eisenhorn walked with the group, his hand now trembling around his cane even as his face was the model of frozen dispassion. “I am seeking the most dangerous heretic in the history of the Imperium. Left unchecked, he will bring about the end of days.”

As they walked, a ticking feeling in his gut caused Eisenhorn to look over his shoulder. Some gut instinct made his eyes lock upon the yellow coat wearing Ogryn woman. He looked away from the woman and coldly ignored Caiaphas Cain ramble about this or that diplomatic rift between the various Inquisitorial orders, the Adeptus Mechanicus and the High Lords of Terra.

Eisenhorn ignored everything Cain had to say. The tickling feeling in his gut he did not ignore. He planted his feet on the ground and turned around fully as Cain began summoning a VIP lift.

“It’s not just the High Lords. Nobody’s heard from Lord Guilliman in a week. Things are tough and we need all hands on deck; Abaddon’s dead but who knows how long another black crusade will be in.” Cain waited for the elevator and failed to notice Gregor eyeing a strange ginger Ogryn.

The Ogryn woman was almost finished her inspection.

The Tek Priest handed her back her passport, inputing the data stream into its terminal. _“What is the duration of your assignment?”_

“Two weeks,” said the Ogryn in a strange, guttural voice.

“ _Do you posses any fruit, vegetables or narcotics?”_ the Tek priest asked.

“Two weeks,” said the Ogryn.

This caught the Tek priest of guard. “ _Answer does not compute. Repeat: do you posses any fruit, vegetables or narcotics?”_

“Two weeks,” the Ogryn repeated. Her face suddenly filled with confusion . “Two Weeks.” She repeated. “Twoooo-weeeeksssss . . . . twwwwwo-weeeeekkkkkssss.”

The crowd parted for her now, trying to avoid being stepped on by the shambling, raving Ogryn woman who was now trying to rip fer face off. All while slurring and ranting about _Two Weeks!_.

Her arms flailed and her feet stomped on the floor, while the Junior Tek Priest moved back in its swivel chair. Whatever its devotion to the Omnissiah, this was more than it had bargained for while working at the Mars City Customs office.

Eisenhorn eyed the flailing Ogryn woman as her red, wiry hell fell off. To the casual outsider it looked like she was trying to tear off her own head.

To Greg Eisenhorn it meant something else entirely. “Blazchowitz,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Hey, the Elevator’s waiting and if we hurry we can finish in time for happy hour,” Caiaphas Cane motioned to their express elevator.

“No you idiot, it’s the Doom Slayer!” Eisenhorn pointed his cane at the Ogryn woman.

Amidst the crowd of horrified onlookers, the “woman” punched a hidden button in the side of her skull. Her rambling about _Two-weeks_ had devolved into cybernetic buzzing and clicking.

“Where?” asked Cain, sincerely confused; all while Skitarii security forces moved to contain or execute the berserk figure holding up the customs line.

“There! The Woman!” Eisenhorn shouted, now charging full tilt at the disguised Doom Slayer.

Looking shocked, Cain pulled out his las pistol and pointed to the giant figure in a yellow coat. “By the Order of the Inquisition, arrest that woman!”

Seemingly responding to this, the figure in yellow stopped moving.

To the horror of all humans involved, the “woman’s” head split open along metal panels. The panels split open to reveal none other than the Doom Slayer.

Grinning maniacally, the Doom Slayer pushed the halves of the mechanical woman head back together with a click.

All around him the Skitarii guards and Eisenhorn’s retinue were prepared to shoot. Caiaphas Cain lagged behind, because he sure as hell wasn’t dumb enough to try being the first to take a crack at a Primarch.

With his superhuman reflexes, the Doom Slayer lobbed the mechanical head at the nearest Skitarii guard. The hapless cyborg grabbed the head with a mechanical extender arm out of reflex.

The Skitarii came eye to eye with the bugged out blue eyes of the face Ogryn head. “Get ready for a surprise!” it announced with cheerful glee.

It was definitely a surprise when the head exploded and blasted that one unlucky Mechanicus soldier to pieces.

Actually he was one of the lucky ones because the head contained conventional explosives but those were only a trigger for something much more dangerous. Inside the head was a device meant to rip open the fabric of space and time.

In the middle of the Mars City Space port, a small gateway to the Warp had opened. It was like a hull breach in a space ship but far, far worse. People were being sucked into the hellscape that was the immateruium. The Skitarii guards were the first to go.

Caiaphas Cain screamed in terror as the portal to the Warp began sucking him up. It was only due to the timely action of his faithful bodyguard and sometimes fuck buddy Jurgen that he avoided such a fate. The stalwart Valhallan caught Cain by the very end of his big, oversized Commissar's jacket.

As more and more people were sucked into the event horizon, Cain screamed out “Don’t let me fall, Jurgen! Please!” he pleaded. Out the corner of his eye, in his mad flailing, he saw Eisenhorn just holding onto a guard rail.

Cain had done and seen a lot of things. At age 200 he was hoping that he might be able to die in his bed, with a belly full of Tana Tea and a dick in his mouth. Having his anus probed by the Escher-reality defying penises of demons was not how he hoped to end his days.

That wasn’t to be his fate, as the Doom Slayer scooped him up like a doll. “Put me down!” Cain pleaded as the Doom Slayer grabbed him by the belt. “Put me down, please!”

Grinning like a lunatic, the Doom Slayer jumped up over the heads of the crowds of people trying not to get sucked into literal hell. Dashing and double jumping over the terrified humans, Doom Slayer landed with Cain right into the elevator that he’d called down for Eisenhorn.

Immensely heavy, the Doom Slayer caused the elevator chassis to creak and grown. Dismissively, he punched out the elevator controls. That was the last straw, as the Doom Slayer and Cain plummeted deep into the surface of Mars.

Countless floors passed in the blink of an eye and Caiaphas Cain was thrown through the doors of the elevator with superhuman accuracy. The Commissar rolled around on the dusty floors, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dark environment lit by glow strips that were older than the Terran Unification wars. Vaguely he was aware of the elevator exploding as it hit the very basement. Up the elevator shaft, the fireball climbed.

Blasting through the gaping doors, the fireball blew the hat off of Cain’s head, exposing the bald spot he worked very hard to hide. It also cast the Doom Slayer into a horrifying light.

Casting off his bizarre costume, he stood before Cain in his slimmed down Praetor suit.

Cain froze at the sight of the Doom Slayer. Even in the Thirteenth Black Crusade, he had no been as afraid as he was now.

“Listen,” his teeth chattered with fear, “I don’t know if you want money . . . or something more sexual. But I know we can make an arrangement.”

None of his words made a dent in the Doom Slayer’s malicious grin. He stepped forward to Cain, dominating him with his power and size. It wasn’t the normal awe that humans felt towards the Emperor or one of his sons. It was some primal breed of uneasy animal panic. The thing across from him was definitely a human, a man; that made him more terrifying than any night breed horrors who stalked the stars.

Cain shut his eyes, as he expected to be murdered. His last words were a prayer for the Emperor to watch over Jurgen.

But today was not that day.

He felt the Las gun be snatched from his hand. Opening his eyes, he saw the Doom Slayer look at the weapon with what could only be described as love at first sight.

Cain didn’t even have a chance to flinch when the Doom Slayer snatched the Red Key Card hanging from his belt.

The Doom Slayer turned around, his business with the Commissar finished. A starter pistol and a key card.

Just like the good old days.

This day was off to a truly wonderful start.

With that, the Doom Slayer moved to find a secret device. A working Null Field Matrix Device. Stolen long ago during the Great Crusade, then forgotten. Stored away in a vault with many other heretical devices.

Doom Slayer looked forward to it all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Slayer remembers his past and encounters a traitor Primarch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special shoutout to Joker Mcnugget. They're my biggest fan so far. 
> 
> Falangists refers to the Spanish fascists of Franco Spain. 
> 
> Kitten is a reference to a recurring character from the web series "If the emperor had a text to speech device." 
> 
> Please give me reviews, Reviews give me life and motivate me to write this story.

Doom: Eternal War

Chapter Five

_Mars, the Forty First Millennium_

The Doom Slayer walked through the hidden tunnels of mars with the Warp Enhancement Matrix in his hand. In the other hand, his trusty shotgun with the full Auto and the Sticky bomb mods was ready for action.

Despite everything, his mind was not at ease. These halls were familiar to him. This was one more step to his plans for killing the Emperor. Yet he did not relish being here. These halls held memories. Hidden memories. Memories that only he could recall.

As he walked through the halls of the Martian Tunnels, the Doom Slayer remembered. Despite the best efforts of the Emperor to erase his memories; the Doom Slayer was experiencing Total Recall.

_Robute Guilliman and Leman Russ moved the screaming figure on the hovering platform through the corridors of Mars. The figure chained down with adamantium bonds had been screaming non stop for over six months. It never ended. It never stopped._

“ _Hold him down!” growled Russ as the figure on the hover platform thrashed like a diseased animal._

“ _What do you think I’m doing!” Guilliman shouted, his patrician composure giving way to frustration and anger._

_The man on the hover slab kept screaming. Just as he’d been doing since the day he’d met the Emperor of Mankind. It had not gone well._

_Even Angron had a better experience meeting his father._

_For whatever reason, this man had been utterly destroyed by the Emperor; his mind smashed and his sanity destroyed. He never once stopped screaming. He never slept, he never ate, he just kept screaming and screaming. That look of bug eyed terror and madness never leaving him._

_The thrashing of his limbs was chaotic and frenzied. This wasn’t normal screaming like he was afraid. It was like he was in terminal pain, close to the verge of death. The Blood curdling scream was enough to even make the Mechanicus Biological Tek Priests shudder with horror._

_They’d tried to keep him sedated since the Emperor destroyed his mind like a porcelain cup. It didn’t work._

“ _We should just put him out of his misery,” said Russ, his hand going to the mighty power sword at his side._

“ _Father told us he was special! That his strength would be an asset!” Guilliman countered with anger._

“ _And who’s going to tell father if I end his suffering? You?” for once, Russ’s blustery and loud style was undermined by angry, hateful sarcasm. “He’s a vegetable. Say hello to the brain damaged, piece of meat that you call a brother! On Fenris we wouldn’t let a dog suffer like this! Let’s end this and face the consequences like men!”_

_The two brothers came face to face. The Patrician of Ultramar and the Warrior King of Fenris. As Russ reached for the power sword at his belt, Guilliman subtly but just as readily reached for the plasma pistol at his belt._

_Before the two Primarchs could come to blows they were interrupted by the marching boots of the Emperor’s own body guards, the Adeptus Custodes._

“ _We will handle this, you two can leave.” said the leader of the Golden Armoured figures._

_Russ’s barking, disdainful laughter said everything. He even forgot the screaming man on the slab, chained down like a madman from an ancient Terran madhouse. “What was that?” Russ put a finger t his ear. “Did my father’s second favourite arse slave dare to talk to me?”_

_The Head of the Custodes did not crack a smile. “The Emperor’s orders. The Eleventh Primarch is to be brought to Terra for re-education and reformation. The Presence of you two is no longer required and you can return to your legions.”_

_Russ laughed once more. “Kitten, you make me laugh. You can take your orders and stick them up your golden arsehole. I’m not going anywhere. The lot of you girls couldn’t fight your way out of a wine skin. So, with no due respect, I’ll stay right here.”_

_The Warrior King of Fenris had never been shy about his disdain for the Custodes. Or as he called them, the Emperor’s little Bitches. Unlike the others, Russ was never shy about his disrespect for the puppets who made up the Legio Custodes._

_The man who Russ derided as “Kitten” tried to keep his composure, the sole one among them with an expression of anything but arrogance. “You serve at the pleasure of my master, puppy,” Kitten countered. “So why don’t you go and scratch at some furniture.”_

_Guilliman was exasperated by the dick measuring contest between Russ and Kitten. While he was more diplomatic about it, the Master of Macragge was equally distrustful of the Custodes. He understood why they were created, but their utter disregard for the lives of anyone but the Emperor unnerved and offended him. Such creatures, beneath their golden finery were nothing but a mockery of the ideals of the Imperial Truth._

“ _Demons!” screamed the Eleventh Primarch, the man who would one day be the Doom Slayer. Upon his slab of adamantium, he had ceased thrashing. His hands reached in their shackles for something invisible. His eyes rolled around at invisible phantoms that existed only in his mind._

“ _See,” Russ pointed to the captive Primarch, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. “Completely broken. So let’s just put him out of his misery. If Papa has any problems you can say that you failed to stop me. If you try to stop me, it’s just going to hurt more.”_

“ _Don’t!” Robute ordered as he pointed his Plasma pistol at Russ. “He is our brother. If he is broken he deserves help, treatment, healing. He’s not an animal.”_

_The Wolf King in his fine power armour let out a chuckle that was more of an animal’s threatening growl than any expression of merriment. “E tu, Robute? E tu? You’re with me or against me, Robute.”_

_The Eleventh Primarch heard none of this, his blood shot eyes and foaming mouth attesting to his madness. “The Demons are everywhere! Demons of the Four Gods! I must kill them all!”_

_The Guards of the Adeptus Custodes kept their weapons levelled at Robute and Russ. But Kitten’s face went pale._

_None of them were prepared for what happened next._

“ _We can contact father,” said Robute. “We can get him on the Vox and have him fix this.”_

_Nobody was prepared for Number Thirteen to shatter the adamantium shackle on his left hand and grab Russ around the face._

_The Wolf King let out a shocked roar of anger as the lost Primarch ruptured his eyeball with his thumb. In less time than a human mind can comprehend, the future Doom Slayer smashed Russ’s head into the side of the slab he was on._

_Guilliman reacted, pulling his pistol on the man who attacked his brother. He was duty bound to defend Russ. Defence of family was a thing even the smallest child on Macragge would understand._

_The Doom Slayer threw Russ’s body at the Custodes, knocking them over like Bowling pins. He launched himself at Guilliman, breaking all three of his remaining shackles at once._

_To say the least, Robute was very offended when the Eleventh Primarch tackled him to the ground and bit his ear off. With a bloody ear clenched between his teeth, The Doom Slayer grabbed the Plasma pistol from Robute’s senseless fingers and ran._

“ _Get him! Don’t aim for the head, cut his legs off!” shouted Kitten, producing a powerful void sword. “Hack off his arms if you have to.”_

_Russ shot up, his ruptured eye rapidly regenerating. “His ass is mine! Emperor be damned!”_

_Down the corridors of Mars, the insensate Doom Slayer ran like a wild animal. Behind him, the tattered remnants of a military coat flew like a superhero’s cape. His dirt and sweat soaked clothes hung for dear life around him as he pushed himself to speeds that were impossible for most ground vehicles._

_Primarchs were built to be tough and durable. Even Lorgar, the least physically intimidating of their number would be easily able to chew through most tank armour without breaking or chipping a tooth. Since the Primarchs were built for battle, very few had ever seen them run away. As it turned out for Kitten and his men, capturing a Primarch was just as hard as it was killing one._

_This Primarch, more than any others, more even than Primarch Number 2 was trouble. So much Trouble that the Custodes wondered why such a broken and useless man would warrant an expenditure of such resources from the Emperor and his servants._

_Kitten and his men charged down the twisting tunnels of Mars after the Doom Slayer, but were easily overtaken by Russ and Robute._

_The Space Wolves Primarch charged with the grace and unrelenting stamina that characterized the Fenrysian wolves. It was his way. The King of Fenris was a man who lived by a simple moral code; eye for an eye. Kindness would be met with kindness and violence with violence. He wasn’t really going to kill the Doom Slayer, maybe, but he was definitely going to rip out both his eyes and keep them as a trophy. Eye for an eye, in this case literally._

_Robute kept pace with the Wolf Lord. He was no slouch or stranger when it came to combat and violence. In his dominant hand he held aloft a void sword of his own. He knew he might have to defend his criminally insane brother not only from Russ and the Custodes but himself. He didn’t know number Eleven’s name; but he was family. If he was truly broken beyond use to the Great Crusade then he deserves compassion and medical treatment; not being put down like a grox with a broken leg._

_It was not a physical barrier that stopped them but a physic one. The force was strong enough to even knock a Primarch almost to the ground. Kitten and his enforcers stood no chance and were out like a light. The Eleventh Primarch himself lay prone, the gun fallen from his fingers, Robute’s ear still clenched in his bloody teeth. Now eyes however were lazy and unfocused; each eye lazily off from the other._

“ _I will handle this,” said the frail old man who looked like what a small child might think a Wizard looked like._

“ _This pup owes me blood, Malcador!” Russ snarled, his eyes bugging with rage and his teeth bared. “You can’t deny me that.”_

“ _Then I invoke the laws of Hospitality, by your own custom. My intention is to take this man in for the night and give me a bed and meal. Tomorrow morning, you can take up whatever grudge you have with him,” The Sigilite proposed. “Fair?”_

_Russ grunted. He was not a man with any love of rules, but as a barbarian king the few rules he did observe, were observed with the regularity of the coming of winter and summer. “One day,” he reluctantly sheathed his sword. “Just one day.” His knuckles crackled under his gauntlets._

“ _What is to become of him?” Robute asked the, probably, only real friend of the Emperor._

“ _What else?” Malcador shrugged under his voluminous robes. “I will see to his recovery. He will command his own legion; the Night Sentinels. He will serve the Great Crusade. You’ve seen this story play out several times, Master of Macragge.”_

_The Sigilite knelt down and put his hands on the Doom Slayer’s shoulder. As a matter of reflex, he spat out the ear he’d bitten off; where it splattered on the floor. “I can see I have a lot of work to do,” he muttered before turning back to the Primarchs. “You two are dismissed. I’ll see to him and to the Adeptus Custodes. Please forgive Kitten, as he is the only one of their number to feel real emotion. He would gladly sacrifice himself for the Emperor, just as you two would; for he chose to serve of his own free will. Now go, we all have a crusade to participate in.”_

_Russ stormed off, huffing with rage. He planned to kill some dangerous animals before leaving Mars for his legion. A few exploratory branches of the Mechanicus were only too happy to pit dangerous and borderline illegal genetic and cybernetic creatures against the Wolf King in the name of science. It would be a good way for Russ to blow off steam._

_Guilliman left in silence, with more questions than answers. He and Russ found their brother on Taras Nabad, in the aftermath of his meeting with the Emperor. A broken man, but broken by the Emperor himself. Laid low by the Master of Mankind after a brief but vicious fight that tore apart an entire Hive City._

_He wondered what lay in store for their eleventh brother._

_Malcador watched as the Primarchs left him. It would be some time before the Custodes woke. This was better. Kitten’s loyalty was beyond question. The Custodes Commander had done the impossible by throwing a demon out of his body that tried to posses him. His strength of will wasn’t in question either. But this had the effect of making him temperamental, act with passion. He could have killed this Primarch, a Primarch who was shaped from birth for a very, very specific purpose._

_From out of the shadows of the Martina Labyrinth, a man in hideously bright rainbow coloured robes entered the juncture with a tray of sandwiches. “Hey, Master Malcador! I finally got those hoagies you wanted and—holy Terra on Roller Skates! What the hell happened here?”_

_Malcador did not look at the man in his disgusting rainbow coloured robes, purple pants or baby blue cravat. “It was something avoidable, Saulus. It was something completely and utterly avoidable. As my lawyer, I don’t need you to fetch me sandwiches as much as I need you to draw up paperwork and identification for our newest addition to the Emperor’s sons.”_

_Saulus pointed with a cybernetic hand at the object in Malcador’s hands. “Is that an ear? Speaking as your lawyer, I think I should draft up termination papers like you had me do for Angron.”_

“ _Don’t start putting words in my mouth, Saulus,” said the Sigilite, his wizened voice tinted with irritation. “He’s going to need a name, a title, formal standing within the Imperium. He will also need full access to my fortress on Europa as well as Security Clearance for the Necronomicon Ex Mortis.”_

_Saulus nearly dropped the tray of sandwiches in shock. “The Necro . . . he has access to the Book of the dead? Boss, I know you said this was a new Primarch, but this is something else. Who is this guy?”_

“ _I told you Saulus, he’s a man with a very specific purpose,” Malcador turned to his lawyer. “Bring some servitors to take him to my Martian estate. Throw away those sandwiches, I have no appetite right now.”_

_The lawer of the Sigilite looked down mournfully at the tray of hoagies. “As you wish. But boss, just remember that no matter what happens, I’ve got your back. Just remember, like when you first found me. In trouble with the law? In danger of wrongful execution or disembowelment? Better Call Saulus!”_

_The Lawyer laughed like a middle aged father telling a terrible joke._

_Malcador’s patience had reached its end. “Get out of of here, you useless bus bench lawyer; before you make me puke.”_

“ _Yes, boss,” Saulus bowed and moved to take all the sandwiches for himself on top of performing his master’s bidding._

“ _You’ll need a name, but what?” Malcador said to the catatonic man. “Most of your records were destroyed by the war with the Fascist Falangists on your world. It’s very telling you treated the Phalangists no better than you treated demons. I think that says something about you. So I’ll name you after another man in a bygone era who fought people like the Falangists. I dub you . . . Blazchowitz.”_

The Doom Slayer snapped out of his memories. It was painful but it happened, much like kidney stones on lesser mortals. And it seemed that he his elevator had brought him into the depths of hell.

Perfect.

The Martian elevator, instead of delivering him to the deepest vaults of the Adeptus Mechanicus, had dumped him right into the stinking blood Swamps of Nurgle.

And standing there in front of him was none other than Magnus the Red.

From the look of it, Magnus had grown more powerful since the death of Abaddon the Despoiler. That was predictable. The Servants of Chaos were nothing but a pack of vultures, picking at the carcass of the Materium. The Red Cyclops looked like shit, twisted and hunched over his staff; the mutations of his patron god Tzeentch only furthering. Next to him, was the bloody, severed head of Hugo Martin mounted on a stick.

“Hi,” said Magnus. His face twisted into a nasty grin.

The Doom Slayer said nothing.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is . . AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!” Magnus threw back his head and raised his staff, screaming wildly into the stinking, festering mess of the blood swamps.

Magnus chuckled and clenched his staff again, “Actually, this is all just a bad dream. You’re back on Mars, heavily sedated, resting comfortably . . . dying because our beloved father the Emperor knew that you would never serve. Because he knew that you do not believe that Mankind should be ruled.” black ichor clung to his teeth and the only thing thicker than the stench of the swamps was his bitterness towards the Doom Slayer. “Tragic irony? Or Poetic Justice? You tell me.”

The Doom Slayer eyed Magnus, his shotgun in hand. It was as if he was waiting for an apology.

“Look at you now, defiant like a child refusing to do his chores.” Magnus’s grin fell, turning into a snarl. “I think I understand you. You want to kill all the demons. But you also want to destroy all the hierarchy. Well, I don’t mind if you kill all the demons. I don’t mind if you kill my patron god. Goodness knows that Tzeentch doesn’t value loyalty. But I can’t let you live if you’re going to stop me from ruling. It’s all I have left. If I can’t rule then I have nothing and everything I’ve done is for nothing.”

Doom Slayer said nothing. He could have said something, but why bother?

Magnus grinned again. “Well enough of that. While you’re burning Nurgle’s own stink factory to the ground, I thought maybe you’d like to get in touch with a mutual friend.”

The Fiery Axe of Angron could have killed an entire planet with one stroke. Not even the Doom Slayer could have survived it. Which is why he didn’t let it hit himself.

The once Primarch turned demon prince of the World Eaters charged at the Doom Slayer, only for the barrel of the shotgun to be thrust into his open mouth. The sticky bomb exploded inside his gory, bloody maw. It would have been something that might have killed any other creature. But not Angron.

The Doom Slayer felt for Angron. He really did. The two of them were compelled to serve the Emperor by force. And he knew that deep down, Angron didn’t want to be a demon, he didn’t even ask for it. He just wanted to die and to die in combat.

Doom Slayer grinned with rage glee. This was going to be fun.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Slayer battles Angron to the heart of Nurgle's realm and meets a long time prisoner of the plague god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired greatly by the Doom Comic book. 
> 
> And the Goddess Isha was a lot to write. 
> 
> Please read and review. Reviews give me life.

Doom: Eternal Warfare

Chapter Six

_The Warp, the Blood Swamps of Nurgle_

Normally the blood swamps were a place full of cold, damp and flies. It wasn’t every day that the swamps were set on fire, the dank peat of the damned dried out in an instant and set on fire by the sheer rage of a demon prince.

Angron was brutal, rage incarnate, without mercy.

The Doom Slayer was worse.

“RIP AND TEAR! RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS!” He charged Angron, screaming with his mind rather than his words here in the realm of the Chaos Gods. “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU THAT I CAN’T FIX WITH MY HANDS!”

The force of his screams sent the Nurglings running for miles and kilometres and lightyears on end. His fists were bloody and torn, right down to the bone. Yet they were as strong, even stronger than ever before. It was like fighting against such an angry, dangerous opponent drove the Doom Slayer to up his game, be better than he was and kick some serious ass.

Every step Angron took turned the water of the swamp into steam and set the bog floor on fire. Even the elemental, entropic rot of Nurgle couldn’t put a dent in the fiery heat that kept him going. Even if he’d been in his right mind, there was now way that Angron was going to roll over and die. There was a zero percent chance he would just give in to time and disease as Father Nurgle demanded.

Angron’s end would be bloody. It would be full of shattered bone, twisted metal, fucked ceramite and hopefully a whole lot of collateral damage.

The Red Angel charged at the Doom Slayer with his twin axes, hideous things of bronze that were forged by the fires of Hell. The Doom Slayer countered with the terrible sword he’d taken from Abaddon, Drach’nyen.

The clashing of the weapons let off a shock wave the flattened fetid weeds, bushes and trees for as far as the mind’s eye could see. The Feculent Gnarlmaw’s of Nurgle were blown over like mortal trees in a simple windstorm.

In their rage, the Doom Slayer and Angron were perfectly matched. Doom Slayer high on his own rage, his helmet shattered to bits by Angron and his hair flying up like the crest of a wild animal. So terrifying was their rage that they caused the disease spores of Nurgle to commit genetic suicide out of pure fear.

Across the sluggish rivers and mucky ponds the two indomitable fighters went. Angron had never been a good man. In fact he’d been downright evil. In his quiet moments, Doom Slayer would remark on how the Emperor had just been peachy keen with whatever acts of random, rage driven cruelty Angron would improvise. Now, all he could think about how was how much he wanted to slaughter the twisted demon in front of him. Same as any piece of shit spawned from the rancid, sore anus of the ruinous powers.

The two furious combatants were getting closer to the Blighted Mansions of Misery and Mirth. Looming like giant tumours from the land, the stinking, rotting mess of dilapidated and crumbling buildings was a foreboding sight.

Normally.

Now before the fire of the Doom Slayer and the Red Angel, the Heart of Nurgle’s realm trembled. The Mansions of Misery and Mirth shook with fear.

Nurgle’s henchman, Horticulus Slimex was riding his trusty battle snail behind a wall made of dead bodies and feces. The Master Gardener of Nurgle screamed with terror as two forces of rage blew through the carefully built wall of decay and disease like it was a pile of leaves. Even more terrifying was the fact that the incandescent heat of the fighter’s primal rage made them immune to even the worst of Nurgle’s plagues.

Seeing that his snail was dead, split open and crushed beneath Doom Slayer’s feet, Horticulus made an executive decision. “Fuck this shit, I’m out!” he scampered away as a team of Plague Marines tried to charge in and contain the two intruders, along with a Great Unclean One of Nurgle.

It didn’t work out well as Angron cut through the Plague marines like a tin can, utterly ignoring their poison and disease ridden shot weapons. Doom Slayer ripped the heart out of the Unclean one and shoved it down its throat. The demon gagged right before exploding like a rancid tomato.

The pair of them went at it like rabid dogs.

Doom Slayer blocked an axe strike aimed at his neck, his devil sword hissing with seething hunger. Moving forward, he kicked Angron in the fork of the legs. Angron didn’t even flinch at the shot below the Belt, reacting to strike with his other axe.

Doom Slayer took advantage of this, getting under the second axe strike and closing in. With vicious fury he punched Angron in the throat. This did stun him.

Angron gasped, his rageful howling replaced by gagging.

Before he could recover, the Doom Slayer had swung his sword at Angron’s leg. The Primarch flew into a full on somersault from the impact; his heavy brass armour blocking the deadly strike but momentum carrying through.

Angron went sailing through the air where he landed face first in a cess pool of Nurgle. He gagged and spat out the fecal demonic waste.

Doom Slayer saw that Angron had a mouth full of shit and realized that he might need help swallowing. He delivered a brutal kick to his midsection, crumpling the cursed armour he wore like the cheap sheet metal on a badly made civilian car.

“WOO BABY!” shouted the Doom Slayer at Angron charged at him with twice as much of the infinite fury he possessed. “I’M BURNING OUT OF CONTROL!!!!!”

Slamming together, the two of them knocked down whole sections of the mansion. Destroying what were eons and infinities of parasitic, diseased growth. The pair of them were a two man wrecking crew that destroyed Nurgle’s prize manse.

The Red Angel returned the favour, headbutting the Doom Slayer and actually knocking out a tooth. More damage than any had done to him in thousands of years. Seizing the opportunity, he locked his razor sharp teeth into the Doom Slayer’s throat.

Such a thing would have been the death blow of just about any other enemy but the Doom Slayer was not so easily killed. “BAD DEMON! BAD!” he howled, spitting up blood and a missing front tooth.

Doom Slayer and Angron smashed through countless other walls and barriers. The two of hit the demon guardians of Nurgle’s realm but their impact was like a wrecking ball upon wet paper. Nothing in this entire realm could even scratch their armour or muss their hair.

The only thing that stopped them was a steep drop into a burning pit over which hung a cage made of . . . silver?

None of them noticed or cared about the cage or its occupant as they fell impossible and reality defying distances into the bottom of the pit.

“GAAH! RADIOACTIVE WASTE!” The Doom Slayer growled as he and Angron struck a molten pool of evil looking and smelling green liquid. “BURNS! STINKS!”

“GET OFF, SCUM!” He slammed the pommel of his sword into the back of Angron’s neck. There was a snap like a wet tree branch breaking. Angron sank into the radioactive liquid while the Doom Slayer exploded out of it like an ancient Terran dolphin.

He began to climb up the side of the pit, covered in what was one of Nurgle’s great allies and advantages. Pollution. While he lived in a garden of rot, Nurgle’s crusade to spread the plague was very much helped out by industrialization.

“WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE LEFT THE RADIOACTIVE WASTE DOWN THERE AND WHY?” Doom Slayer screamed to himself as he scampered up the wall of the pit towards the silver cage. “WHY DID THE EMPEROR BACK ON TERRA LEAVE RADIOACTIVE WASTE EVERYWHERE!” He hollered once more “WHY DID HE LEAVE BARRELS OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE EVERYWHERE ON TERRA WHEN HE COULD HAVE HAD IT SAFELY DISPOSED OF??? WHY! WHY!”

He continued to ramble to himself as he reached the top of the pit. His neck tendons stood out and the veins in his temple pulsed. Something about falling into nuclear shit had triggered him. Done something to him. Unlocked another memory he’d long repressed or had been repressed by the manipulations of the Emperor.

“I’M RADIOACTIVE! THAT CAN’T BE GOOD!” as he attempted to use the demon sword Drach’nyen to comb his hair; the side guards of the lethal weapon helping to straighten his crazy hair.

“WHY COULDN’T THE EMPEROR HAVE FOUND A SAFE WAY TO DISPOSE OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE WHEN HE WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER AND PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT!” he ranted to nobody in particular. His eternal rage now changed in character and nature; born from sadness rather than true wrath. “HE’S HARDLY BETTER THAN THE DEMONS!”

From inside the silver cage, a figure watched with both fear and of hope. Her eyes watching the raving madman bound around the spot as he tried to get the nuclear goo out of his shoes.

“EVEN IF I PERSONALLY KILL ALL THE DEMONS AND STOP THE DEMONIC INVASION, WHAT KIND OF UNIVERSE WILL WE BE LEAVING FOR OUR CHILDREN???” Despair coloured his anger now. As a figure slowly climbed up the walls of the pit.

“AND OUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN! AND . . . OH THE HUMANITY!”

Angron was never normally one for silent attacks, but he just had his neck broken like a dry noodle so he wasn’t at his best. He still managed a cry of triumphant rage as he stabbed the Doom Slayer in the back with both of his hellfire forged brass axes.

“STUPID! FOR TURNING MY BACK!” Doom Slayer grunted with pain. But despite having two axes buried deep enough to split his heart in half, he was not even close to dead. He spun around, the axes staying buried in his back. Shocking Angron for once in his demon possessed, blood soaked life.

“STUPID DEMON PRINCE!” he snarled at Angron. He swung his sword and cleanly sliced the top off of Angron’s head. It slid off his skull like a hat blowing off in the wind. “YOU’RE STUPID, AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE STUPID AND DEAD!”

In a power move, he scooped out Angron’s brain from his head like a big handful of jelly. Angron’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell like a puppet with the strings cut.

Doom Slayer crushed Angron’s brain in his hand; shattering the butcher’s nails in the process. It was a fearful sort of technology. The very worst of what humans could build. A technology so utterly evil it could corrupt even demigods and demons.

Making sure to finish the job, Doom Slayer thrust his fist through Angron’s chest and pulled out his beating heart. The heart screamed with anger, even the individual parts of Angron’s body were driven solely by hate.

Doom Slayer screamed at the telltale heart as he crushed it to a fine pulp. “DANCE! DANCE BONE DADDY!”

There was a final scream and then Angron went still for the last time. Right before his body crumbled into nothing, less than dust, there was a look of relief from his face.

“Please, let me out!” came a clear, feminine voice.

Doom Slayer looked up, to the cage where the voice had originated. He tried to shout something, but his mouth made no noise. Just like that his body had stopped being able to talk again. He grunted.

From in her cage of torment, the elfin figure spoke. “I am Isha, the Aeldari Goddess of Healing and Fertility.”

Doom Slayer was stunned. He tried to speak once more. But no sound came out. So he settled for grunting.

“I beg of you, stranger, please set me free. Nurgle has taken me prisoner for many an aeon.” Her eyes were wide and full of emotion.

Doom Slayer did not trust her. But he also did not walk away, not yet. The death knell of Angron had frightened away all of Nurgle’s henchmen. He had a few moments.

“I know you want to kill demons,” she said, “But I know you to have a kind heart.”

This made the Doom Slayer laugh. Or he tried to laugh. His body shook. She was funny. Unlike demos she could actually tell a joke. Demons had no sense of humour.

“I know my people have hurt yours many times,” she said. “I know my children have grown arrogant and cruel, but I am begging you to free me. They need my guidance. I know they can be better than what they are.” Tears formed at the corner of her eyes.

Doom guy was silent, swaying from side to side, like a beaten dog who wanted to trust but who had utterly forgotten how to.

“The Humans aren’t bad people,” she went on, “Your people are capable of kindness, warmth and compassion. The Imperium as it exists does not let them. I know you hate your father, the one the Demons call Anathema.

“I know you’re a man of violence but I feel you are a moral man. I’ve known men of violence, men who want to dominate and destroy until there’s nothing left. Khaine was such a man and so is your father, the one they call Revelation. As I’ve sat here in my cage, I’ve asked myself who killed the world.”

She wept openly as she said to him. “Good sir, I do not want my babies to grow up to be war lords!” she sobbed into her gown. “I know you are a man who loves guns. I do not have any guns to give you. I can heal. I can give you healing.” she raised her trembling hands and presented a blue life sphere.

Doom Slayer was quiet. Anger etched across his face, but unlike the minions of Khorne his anger had nuance. His was righteous anger. His was anger born of loss, sadness and moral drive. His anger had many notes and many colours.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she said as her tears and sobs died down, “I’ve spent my imprisonment trying to fight Nurgle. I’ve whispered the cures to his plagues to mortals, trying to save them from him. I’m not a fighter. I was created to be a medic by the Old Ones when they needed psychic weapons to fight the C’tan. So if you’ll allow, I’ll earn my keep by being your medic.”

Doom Slayer was quiet. His eyes rolled back and forth. The wheels in his head were turning.

Isha yelped with fear when the Doom Slayer jumped onto her cage. Putting away his demon sword, he ripped off the door hinges with his bare hands.

Reaching out, he took the blue life sphere from her hands and soaked it in. His wounds instantly healed and his tooth grew back.

“I know I can’t shoot, so I don’t want you to have to perform an escort mission,” she explained to him. “So if you have a coin slot on your armour, I can join you like that.”

Before his very eyes, she transformed from a beautiful, elfin woman into a metal coin.

The coin fell into the Doom Slayer’s hand. Her face was imprinted on the side facing up. “I will help you. I can heal you and guide you. After you kill the Immortal Human called the Emperor, you can do as you wish. If my people decide to interfere with you, I will speak on your behalf. They will listen to me.”

It was a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl. Girls turns into a coin. Boy shoves that coin into a coin slot in his armour because that’s how these old stories go.

Doom Slayer felt Isha’s presence in his ears.

_I can show you the fastest way out of the Realm of Nurgle, Anything after that, you’ll have to fight your way out._

Doom Slayer grinned.

She really understood him.

Now he needed to get his ass to Mars.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see into the past of the Doom Slayer
> 
> And Magnus makes his plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Falangists are based off of General Franco's Fascist government, because Nazi imagery is way too easy. 
> 
> This was a decision I came to after watching a couple of Guillermo Del Toro movies where he eviscerates the Francoist faction in the Spanish civil war. 
> 
> The Nuking of Hive City Guernica is a reference to the real life fire bombing of Guernica in the Spanish civil war. 
> 
> Please keep reading and reviewing. This gives me joy. 
> 
> Next chapter we get more time with Doom Guy and Isha

_Doom: Eternal Warfare_

_Chapter Seven_

_The Thirty First Millennium, Taras Nabad, Hive City Madrid_

The Man grunted as every single news tablet, hologram and shouter in the hive city trumpeted the praise and adoration of the New Liberators. At the sound of the word liberator, the giant in a military trench coat grunted; his heavy eyebrows furrowing with suspicion and distrust. His stride was heavy and his posture was sure. His stooped shoulders and hunched posture was that of a man who wanted not trouble and his clenched, calloused knuckles showed him to be a man ready to end trouble.

He moved past the throngs of people celebrating. Irritation drifted across his rough hewn features as throngs of drunken Hive dwellers bumped into him repeatedly. Men, women, non-binaries and whatever else kept on screaming and shouting; turning into an sweaty, shrill and aggravating mass of humanity. The man pulled his trench coat tighter around him, as if to ward off the sounds, smells and heat of packed masses of humanity.

Most days he could handle a crowd. Most days people left him well alone. Sometimes, somebody would be dumb enough to try and rob him. Nobody had tried to rob him yet. That somehow further irritated him. His free hand clenched extra tight around the disposable bag carrying some kind of heavy, dense matter.

Towering above even the largest mutants, the man made his way slowly but steadily through the throngs of revellers. Everywhere, the symbol of the damn two headed eagle was broadcasted. People were painting it on doors, on walls and tattooing it on their bodies. It was just a stupid bird, but for some reason the symbol of the “liberators” reminded him very much of the logo of the Falangists.

Speaking of which, he stopped in the dark under tunnels to look at a flat-viewer screen for people too poor to afford holograms. Hordes of homeless recluses huddled around the screen for warmth; its cathode tube way generating more heat than a device like it should have.

Plastered across the blurry, static ridden screen were a band of nine Falangists dangling from nooses. The men and women of the Falangist death camps now were being picked apart by the rats. Their bloated faces and blackened tongues were still clearly visible even across the chipped, steaming hot screen of the 2D-viewer screen.

Stopping in his tracks, the Man looked upon the scene of homeless derelicts huddling for warmth while a gold plated despot from the stars won people over with his pretty face and a shit load of guns.

There may have been a symbolism in the moment, but the Man cared nothing for it. He just wanted to watch the Falangists hang. He wasn’t sure what kind of program this was or how it got broadcasted across the official airwaves, but as far as he was concerned the only good Falangist was a dead Falangist.

He kept walking, leaving the scene only when the screen changed once more to the so called Imperial Truth and to two headed eagles and why it was a good idea to kiss the ring of a big guy with pretty hair and a sword that screamed male insecurity.

The Hive was dark and the pipes were rusted and dripping. Not everyone was celebrating. Some people actually had to work for a living. The Man started steering his path towards a open market filled with vendors, booths, hole in the wall restaurants, bars and more. If it was edible, it would be deep fried. That was the rule of El Rastro.

The name was famous all across the Hive City. Specifically, the giant flickering Holographic sign read _El Rastro De Madrid_. This was the place where you went to get some decent street food, maybe the best. Sometimes you’d have to kill a few bandits, gangers or mutants in the process but anything was worth a taco.

Tacos. The smell of them cut even through the industrial grease, waste and stench of the hive. Tacos made everything better. In the Grim Dark of the Thirty First Millennium, There were only Tacos. Tacos were one of the only things left worth fighting for.

The Man steered into the Rastro, heading for the one taco stand with the biggest line. Behind the grill, an absolutely ancient _abuela_ made a dozen tacos at once with the help of her six cybernetic arms. With translucent pale skin, bugged out eyes and dozens of bargain brand cybernetic implants, the old grandmother was mean and rough as these streets in the underhive. Maybe that was why the Tacos were so good; they had to be good to give you the will to live in a place like this.

Next to her in the cramped booth, her two steroid injecting, bar brawling, gladiator game fighting twin _nieto’s_ chopped fresh vegetables and washed the cutlery. On a daily basis, the grandsons murdered at least one person in their quest to get their grandmother fresh vegetables; grown in the hydroponic gardens in the Hive City’s mid levels.

The old woman put out her order of Tacos before catching the eye of the biggest, meaning mother fucker in the Rastro. “Hey! Let him through!” she shouted above the crowd, her creaky old voice reverberating claws on a chalkboard.

The lineup at the Taco stand parted ways for the Man, who marched forward with a bag of some kind of animal feed in one hand. The Man gave the slightest smile as the scent of grilled meat, fresh cut vegetables and warm corn flower hit his nose.

Someone in the crowd had something to say about it. “Slag off! I was in line first!” some modified thug tried to pull a weapon on the Man. The Man didn’t have to life a finger as the grandmother behind the counter grabbed his weapon arm with her flesh hand and used her vegetable chopping prosthetic to slice it off. The man screamed as the woman took the severed limb and threw it into the crowd. She raised her hands as if daring anyone else to fuck around and find out.

Behind her, one of her bald headed, stone faced grandsons replaced their grandmother's vegetable knife with a clean one.

“Still the same as ever, Chatter-Box,” the grandmother laughed as she started furiously making a special order of Tacos. “At the orphanage you can’t shut up, in the war you didn’t say a word. That’s my kink, a man who can shut the fuck up. I’m making your favourites. Pass the credits to Marco and Lionel.”

Her rapid tone reflected the rapid pace of her slicing and cooking. Fresh premium meat grown in the finest cloning vats sizzled delicious and fresh scallions from a hydroponic lab released aromatic chemicals.

The Man smiled and tossed a credit chip like a coin. One of the twins caught it without even looking, snatching it with razor sharp reflexes.

The Man looked at the booth, his smile shifting from something bone chilling to something more warm and paternal. Tacos made everything better, such was the way of the universe. It would be a truism that would hold right past the heat death of the universe and the last civilizations clustered around Iron Stars with the intent to make burritos instead.

While she cooked, chopped, stirred and fried, the Grandmother spoke to him. “You know I miss the bad old days? I miss the days right after the Falangists atom bombed Hive City Guernica. It was you, me and the squad in our Falangist killing days. For all that those bastards talked about religion, order and work they were pretty quick to made a deal with the devil and summon demons on us. But I kind of like the demons better than Falangists, Falangists chose to be assholes but demons were born that way.”

She chuckled. “It’s obvious you don’t age. You don’t have a grey hair on you. You just grew uglier instead of older.”

He laughed. A sincere, friendly laugh. Only a true friend could insult another friend this way without being stabbed.

“You’re so ugly the sweat runs down the back of your head,” he grunted in a rough, grating voice.

The old woman behind the taco stand laughed. It was nasty, shrill laughter like a food can being ripped open by a starving skaven. “Take your tacos and get the fuck out of here before you make me puke. I’ll see you around.”

He smiled, took what was owed him and left. Walking home with a bag of animal food and a throw away container of people food. For now all worries about the new regime from the stars and this shit about an Imperial truth were pushed out of the man’s head in the much more important pursuit of Tacos.

He left the Rastro for the public housing block. Where he lived. The areas were equally dark dirty and grungy, but the the crowds were dying down. Most of the revellers were in the major commercial and public areas of the Hive City. On his way to the public housing he was temporarily molested by a immortal tumour monster that trawled the vents of Madrid in search of food. A quick kick from him drove the monster back into its hole in search of easier prey.

He was in no mood to deal with the damn cancer monster today. He was already behind schedule.

The character of the apartment blocks changed, it was still dark and dingy but the workmanship of the walls was solid and sturdy. The doors of each apartment were similarly fortified. People could live, cook Tacos, cook amphetamines, make love, make hate and more in the privacy of a quiet little home.

His home was somewhere near the bottom of the apartment block. A quick swipe of his blue key card opened the door and he ducked to enter the apartment.

The Man sighed, putting down the animal food and opening up his box of Tacos. He took a bite of the crunchy tortillas filled with delicious fried food made with oregano and cilantro grown from seeds that according to rumour came from a vegetable and herb lineage going back to the dawn of Taras Nabad’s settlement.

Crumbs fell down the Man’s shirt and spilled onto the dirty floor as he used a foot to kick the front door shut. He dropped the bag of animal food, the plastic bag falling away to expose a cartoony picture of some long eared creature with big bucked teeth.

The Man happily crunched his Tacos, until all were gone. Satisfied with it, he licked his fingers to get all the juices off of them. With that out of the way he threw the packaging into an overflowing garbage that he would really get to throwing out. He threw his trench coat off onto the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. The tension left his shoulders as he sat down on the bed which was far too small for his demi god sized body.

He stopped to adjust an old black and white hologram, one of his youth. The Hologram depicted a group of mutant children at an orphanage. The Man wasn’t hard to spot in the picture, he was the big bastard in an ill fitting school uniform with a scowl that could intimidate a starving grox. Next to him was a younger version of the Taco stand Abuela; this time with four mutant arms instead of six cybernetic ones. Content with the placement of the Hologram, the man took the bolter in his holster and put it down on a stack of Comic tablets.

This month’s issue was a good issue. Extremely stupid but extremely entertaining. Something about a Butch Lesbian who killed all the men in her tribal area and savoured the lamentation and sexual ecstasy of the widowed women. It was one hundred percent dumb and one hundred percent what the man loved to read. Last month’s issue was nearly as good.

“Daisy!” he shouted, before whistling. “Daisy! Where are you girl?”

Daisy should have been greeting him by now. Frowning once more he shouted, “Daisy, don’t tell me you got stuck in the toilet again!”

He got up and walked past the rack of clean and well maintained guns, the only clean, well oiled things in this whole run down apartment.

He stopped when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Spinning around the Man saw . . . Him.

He knew this person and had never even met him. He’d seen his face on the news propaganda, the man with golden armour, fancy hair and penis compensating sword.

It was him and it wasn’t him.

He wasn’t the man on the news reels and yet he was.

It was like some kind of alarming and all too real optical illusion. Like the impossible staircase, the Man knew who this was.

It was the Emperor.

And he did not like it.

This wasn’t the Emperor that he saw on the television. This was what he saw as a father. It was everything that the Man wanted in a father. He was a rakish, confident and humble soldier who would drink and fight with equal skill.

This was everything that the Man wanted in a father. He had never had a family. He was found in a pod a few years before Hive War 2 and raised in Matthew Ward’s Orphanage for Mutant children.

For as long as he’d lived, he wanted a father. He found a family in battle, but never a father.

This was his father.

And that scared him.

There was no way that the Man should know what his father looked like. He would sometimes joke that the pod was his mother. But realistically there was no reason that he should think of the Emperor was father.

He stood there, staring at the emperor with wide eyed shock. His jaw slack and his hands loose. It was when he heard the Emperor speak that he flinched.

“It’s been a long time, sonny,” the Emperor said. “I’ve been looking for you.” He lit a cigar and took a puff of it. “I gotta say, you’re a hard man to find. Care for a smoke?”

The Man looked back and said nothing. His hands curled into fists. He had thought about meeting a hypothetical father for years. Even when he’d given up on it, it lived in his unconscious mind. So how then, could anything so perfectly match up with his childhood image of what a father would look and act like. He had gotten what he had always wanted.

And that scared him.

In the army, there was a joke that there was always a most important rule in combat; there was no such thing as a second or third and most important lesson. Fathers fucked up, fathers were flawed. This man was not. He had the veneer of a man as dusty, dirty and working class as the Man himself, but this wasn’t real.

The most important rule of combat that the Man had learned was that if something looks too good to be true it’s not true. When the enemy looks perfect for an ambush they’re usually fucking with you. When you get assigned by high command to a criminally easy job, it’s you probably being sent to your death. Anything too good to be true was never true.

The Emperor laughed at the Man’s indecision and puffed a ring of cigar smoke. “Least you could do is leave some tacos for me, ya dumb bastard.” His tone was warm and he smelled of nicotine, black caff and distilled spirits.

This was not real. Not any more real than the golden warrior on the propaganda channels. This was not real. This was some kind of nightmare. If his father was the Emperor that made him some kind of royalty. He did not want to be royalty. He did not want medals, titles or any of that other shit.

Last month’s comic tablets were all about wishes. About a man who made wishes and even without any cruel twists, those wishes brought him nothing but pain. It was a bleak and harrowing issue and not one that he wanted. The Curse of the Jokareo’s paw was about the price of wishes. The story ended with the protagonist finally reaching the top of the Fictional Hive City. And he was faced with the boredom and monotony and loneliness of being on the top of shit mountain.

The Man did not want to be on the top of the Mountain. He had wanted a father but he never wanted it this way. This was what he asked for and it was not what he wanted.

The Emperor’s demeanour didn’t change as his son looked over to the gun he’s put by the bed. “Don’t be a fool, you sunnaofabitch. I have the high ground.”

What happened next was something that neither of them could predict. The Master of Mankind was close to taking his eleventh son under his wing. It was all ruined by a bunny.

The lagomorph hopped out of the bathroom, her fur soaking wet from being trapped in the toilet. The poor stupid thing wanted to greet her beloved owner. In her own tiny mammal way, she loved him. Her tiny little brain was not ready for the majesty of the Emperor, even disguised as he was.

Daisy hopped into the living room of the cramped studio apartment, took one look at the God Emperor of Mankind and had a heart attack. The tiny little thing was dead before her body hit the floor.

“Daisy,” The Man’s voice was quiet. “Daisy?”

“It’s just a rabbit,” said the Emperor, dismissively.

He would regret it for the rest of his life as in that moment, Grief turned into rage and the future Doom Slayer attacked the Emperor with the fury that a thousand Ork Waaagh’s couldn’t dare to match.

The pair of them went crashing through the Hive City walls until they went flying into the open air of the hostile surface of Taras Nabad.

“YOU KILLED DAISY!” he roared with blind, grief induced rage. The two of them fell thousand and thousands of feet.

The Emperor would have none of it. “So forget!” he retorted, putting his hand on the Doom Slayer’s face.

Then there was the scream. The scream heard literally around the world as the Emperor personally liquefied the Doom Slayer’s brain like ice cream on a hot day.

The pair of them crashed onto a rocky mountain face.

Scornfully the Emperor stood up and dusted himself off, while his son twitched and tweaked like a drug addict dying of an overdose. “Count yourself lucky, boy. I need someone who can kill demons. No one else can know about them, know about Chaos. But you, you will be so much worse than them. I have a lot of work to do in order to make you obedient. When you learn to bend the knee, you’ll rip and tear until it is done.”

* * *

_The Forty First Millennium, the Warp_

Magnus the Red scowled as he watched Angron be killed by the Doom Slayer. He had prepared for that possibility. Already, his patron god Tzeentch was showering him with riches, power and knowledge. He had struck a major blow against the Plague god and against Khorne as well. Such things pleased Tzeentch, as the Doom Slayer was shaking up the established order. As much as order could exist in the warp.

Magnus grit his sharp teeth as the Doom Slayer shoved Isha into his armour like a token at a game arcade.

That bothered him.

Times were changing.

He did not worship the Chaos Gods as the slaves did. It was business. He killed, betrayed, maimed and more. They gave him power in return. Often with Tzeentch he got rewards sporadically and with no pattern, rhyme or reason.

Magnus wanted a way out. He wanted power and the gods were only standing in his way.

Isha, could ruin everything.

She was kind. Kindness had no place in his world, in his equations. There was no room for kindness in Chaos. Even when he was still the Emperor’s loyal bitch boy, his pet magician, there was no room for softness, kindness or generosity.

Power was the only thing that mattered.

And if he didn’t stop it soon, Isha would threaten his power.

He put away his looking glass and planned the next move in his fucked up chess game.


End file.
